Aspiring professional golfer Jonathan Farber actively seeks out opportunities to work less and make more. He got his first taste of financial freedom through rentals and by knowing exactly where to buy them. Today, Jonathan walks us through his in-depth process for finding his next market to ensure he yields the best returns, and how you can do the same for your next investment.
Jonathan Farber Real Estate Background:
- Full-time real estate investor, podcast host, podcast course creator, and real estate mastermind coach
- 7 years of real estate investing experience
- Portfolio consists of 4 buy-and-hold units, 5 short-term rental properties, 2 flips, 3 house hacks, 4 wholesales, and 1 wholetail
- All real estate investments are completely passive
- Based in Plainview, NY
- Say hi to him at: https://jonfarber.co/
- Best Ever Book: Best Ever Apartment Syndication Guide & Rocket Fuel
Click here to know more about our sponsors:
TRANSCRIPTION
Ash Patel: Hello, Best Ever listeners. Welcome to the Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever Show. I’m Ash Patel, and I’m with today’s guest, Jonathan Farber. Jonathan is joining us from Plainview, New York. He’s a full-time real estate investor, podcast host, podcast course creator, and real estate mentor mastermind coach. Jonathan has 7 years of real estate investing experience and owns a variety of properties.
Jonathan, thank you for joining us. How are you today?
Jonathan Farber: I’m doing well, excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Ash Patel: Fantastic. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit more about your background and what you’re focused on now?
Jonathan Farber: For sure. Like you mentioned, I am based in Plainview, New York at the moment. That’s where I grew up. And I, as a kid, wasn’t all that ambitious, I was sort of just working on different things, coming up with different projects, but kind of just whatever piqued my interest.
I got into golf when I was in my high school years and ended up meeting a lot of people through that, who kind of exposed me to business, to real estate, things like that. Ended up playing golf in college, and still thought that’s what I was going to be doing when I came out of college, tried to pursue professional golf or maybe club Pro, something like that. But I ended up finding a mentor who was actually in the software industry, and that’s what took me down from Long Island to North Carolina; just kind of a funny thing… He was the president of the company. I didn’t really know it at the time, it was like a 12,000 or 13,000 person company. But I just cold-called him and I basically kind of pitched myself to him. And he was able to kind of give me a nudge into getting into business and kind of get my head on straight. I was not really that focused at the time.
But in doing that, I moved down to North Carolina, started with some beginner real estate investing strategies. I was ambitious, but then at the time realized I just kind of wanted to figure out a path to financial freedom, financial abundance, to figure out if there’s a way that I could kind of offset or subsidize some of the income I was making, and then kind of more have the choice to work instead of just being forced to work. And that’s when I got started with house hacking, which some of your listeners may or may not know, but you buy something, you live in one portion of it, rent out the other parts, and just did that for a couple years.
And then also on the side, as I was still in corporate, I started buying other rentals or experimenting with other kind of real estate entrepreneurship strategies – wholesaling, Airbnb. I got really big into systems and virtual assistants, that kind of became fun for me to just experiment with and see where we kind of design process and plug them in and remove ourselves, and I still love doing that to this day. And we try to document all of our processes, and if we’re going to stand up a property, or anything like that.
But anyway, we’ve kind of scaled into — this year, I was able to hit stage one of financial freedom. Left my corporate job, and now I’ve been focusing on scaling a furnished rental business and also standing up a wholesale business along with now doing some training on how we do a daily podcast with virtual assistants, and kind of help with the backend stuff… And then also for what we do, and kind of just some accountability and helping beginners get started. But that’s the long and short of it.
Ash Patel: Okay, that’s a lot like me – you lacked ambition, but now you’re finding ways to not work, using VAs and systems. And you want to achieve financial freedom, which is a great recipe. Awesome.
Alright, so you mentioned a lot of different asset types, let’s dive into those. What all are you investing in right now?
Jonathan Farber: So at the beginning, I was just scaling kind of a single-family and small multi portfolio; ones, twos, fours, stuff like that. And for me, it was really just on the path, I was not thinking about a cash flow number. In my head, I had an idea of what it costs to live every month, which you know, was a modest $2000 or $3000; I was just starting, and 22 years old. And then I thought more around strategies to get to that. So I was looking at multifamily actually, hardcore as I thought I could be, around the time COVID hit. Actually, it’s pretty funny, I was not sure what to do or steps to take, and I moved actually from New York to Kentucky when everything turned virtual for COVID. I didn’t tell my job, they thought I was still in New York and I just started prospecting for multifamily.
I actually read Joe’s book, which is still probably my favorite real estate book. And actually I reached out to Joe, it’s pretty funny, that’s how we first connected. I made a video just telling him all the things that I was happy to maybe do for his business; cut his grass, do social media, whatever. He was cool and he got back to me, but I was really just hunting for multifamily at the time; then I realized I needed some more syndicator friends and just learn more about the business, that it’s an amazing way to get wealthy. But I was looking to do something to get out of my job, to replace my income as fast as possible. I was wondering what the strategies would be.
So for me, then I started looking more at wholesaling and furnished rentals, some long-term stay, some short-term stay, like Airbnb stuff. And then just in the last year, I acquired four properties on my own, single-family homes in either vacation markets or markets that I thought we had enough transactions to do business days or students, furnished housing, nightly or monthly. And then I just did another property with a partner, where we kind of set it up that he got the debt in his name because I was out of my job, and then I kind of set up the operations.
So right now the main asset class of rentals I’m focusing on is furnished rentals; not necessarily nightly Airbnb all the time, but we do have some of them are in destination places, mountains, beaches, golf courses. And then the other part of the portfolio is single-family properties and one four-unit in Raleigh, North Carolina, where we’re appealing to nurses and professors and people between their homes, that sort of stuff. And then just set up systems behind that.
So right now nine units total, and most of it is being converted to furnished rentals, where just for me – again, I had the old model in my head of how many single-family doors or doors do I need at $200 or $300 a month to get to my financial freedom number. But by learning more about this path, we have some properties now that can generate anywhere from $4,000 to $5,000 a month, single-family properties, and that’s cash flow. So I wasn’t really seeing that multifamily or single-family traditional rentals at the time, so that’s why I decided just transition into that.
Ash Patel: Incredible. So your four unit in—was it Carolina?
Jonathan Farber: Yeah, Raleigh.
Ash Patel: Is that set up as a nightly-weekly rental, or is it longer term?
Jonathan Farber: We’re actually in the middle of doing a split test. Right now, there’s two units that are traditional rental. And it could just show the power of this right now – and I don’t say this is going to be around forever, but usually the way I think about it is, it’s kind of worth tapping into and I think you’ll understand why in a sec.
The two units on the right – unfurnished, traditional rentals, rent for about $1,100 a month; they’re two one-and-a-halves. And the two units on the left, either nightly or monthly, can gross anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000 per unit a month, which is insane. And obviously there’s different costs; cleaning and furnishing that you have to amortize over, but that’s the way that we set that one up. And one of the two units that does furnished rentals is nightly and the other has been more on like a month-to-month track.
Ash Patel: You mentioned Joe’s book – is your ultimate goal to be a syndicator?
Jonathan Farber: Actually, no. When I learned the details of it and speaking to a lot of people on my podcast and getting very close [unintelligible [00:07:40].29] it’s just not the business that gets me as fired up, or not right now what my goals are. Maybe one day. But I was, but I changed my kind of thought on that. I don’t see that in my path anymore.
Ash Patel: Why is that? Because it seems like everybody wants to become a syndicator, it just seems like an attractive business model.
Jonathan Farber: I thought so too, and not to say it isn’t, but what I found and also doing a podcast and talking to a lot of syndicators and, again, having some really close friends that are – I think a lot of people get attracted to it by the door count. A lot of people get on podcasts, and I see this too. And the second someone tells me their door count, I ask them, “How much do you actually make every month?” Because I think there’s a little bit of an illusion here. A lot of beginners hear someone say they have 7,000 doors, but they don’t really know what that means. So it’s a sexy thing that I think a single-family investor gets really excited about, and then learns about it. And it’s not a small thing, it’s a real business; you need to actually have infrastructure and have funding and be able to build a system to find deals. So I think it sounds sexy, and it definitely can be an awesome strategy to build wealth. It’s not a short-term thing. It’s something that I think you can obviously make a lot of money over a long period of time. But in now having some more conversations and hearing some things kind of off the cuff, I think I’ve maybe learned a little bit more of how the sausage is made to just have a little bit of a less tinted view of it. And nothing against it, but I think just for me when I thought about my goals and what I could do from a cash flow perspective, that was what it was about for me. It wasn’t about anything vanity, it wasn’t about telling people how many doors I had. For me, it’s just about money. I just have needs and I want to be able to cover them, and also have a little bit of a lifestyle, a business where I can travel and do it from laptop and do some of the other stuff and projects.
So that’s the main reason why. I still think it’s a great business, but I think a lot of people, they get excited at the concept of that, and they see Grant Cardone flying in a private jet and that’s looks pretty cool. But I think there’s a lot of stuff behind the scenes that the best marketers are good marketers, and then if you get behind the curtain, it’s not always what it is.
Ash Patel: It’s not always rainbows and unicorns, huh?
Jonathan Farber: Not always big, maybe , you know,—
Ash Patel: Yes.
Jonathan Farber: —for some people.
Ash Patel: You moved to Kentucky. Why? Was that Just for real estate, searching properties?
Jonathan Farber: Mm-hmm. It was really just — I thought there was an opportunity, and it was just to meet people and try to learn the business. It was right at the beginning of COVID; I just broke my lease in New York, I sold pretty much all my furniture, I was kind of nomading. And at the time, everything furnished — Airbnb was so cheap out there, too.
But I met a couple friends at a conference, it was actually a BiggerPockets Conference. And then I was just doing some of the stuff—this was right around the time I read that book. And made some friends in Kentucky; I was kind of breaking up the country into what markets I would be considering. And that was one that I looked at like a cash flow market where, coming from New York, you could still cash flow; the returns were still decent.
And I just felt like there was only so much that I could do from behind the screen. And someone that I remember I talked to a couple times then – you probably know him, he’s been on the podcast, Logan Freeman – he had a saying or something that stuck with me, which is, “If you can fly, you can buy.” People take you a lot more seriously when you’re in-person, instead of just calling here and there and saying, “Hey, put me on your list” or “Send me your deals.”
But I remember when I got there, people took me seriously, “You just drove here from New York and now you’re here for three months?” I was looking at deals, I was knocking on doors, I was meeting brokers. There were still some in-person meetups, and it was a way to learn the neighborhoods, learn the people and just to get a feel for things that probably maybe could have been done behind a screen, but I felt like it was just a way to speed that up. And also, if I could have done it, why not? I was single— I still am single, but didn’t have to be anywhere, and that was just something that I thought could kind of move things a lot faster.
And I learned that market really well from just driving around all day and meeting people, and that was a cool thing to do. I’d recommend that, especially now with things being virtual. If you’re really serious about doing it, it really kind of kick-started so many relationships in a market that I felt like no one was really taking me seriously from out of state, when it’s just one or two people can kind of connect you to everyone in the market and that’s kind of what happened. So I spent two months in Kentucky and then I split a month between Indiana and Ohio. And I still have a lot of friends now that met then and we talk every day. It’s just kind of weird how that happened.
Ash Patel: And have you bought properties in those markets?
Jonathan Farber: That’s where we’re doing the wholesaling now. While I was there, we stood that up. I did have two buildings under contract – and again, this was right at the beginning of COVID, when all the debt was kind of drying up and changing week to week. So those two transactions fell through. But right now, we have a couple projects going for wholesaling and flipping stuff out there. And that’s been kind of a good play in an area there, but no multifamily out there.
Ash Patel: Are you wholesaling just single-family houses?
Jonathan Farber: Anything I’d say one to four right now has been what we’ve done; sometimes we’ve had some random stuff pop up. Right now, we’re negotiating on a six-unit portfolio of single-family homes, so stuff like that comes through.
I think the goal would be to see if there’s a way to transition it either into acquiring multifamily buildings or wholesaling multifamily buildings. I have a couple friends that do that and they do very well with it. I don’t know that many people that do it, so that would be cool. But right now, it’s mainly single families.
Ash Patel: Any thoughts on wholesaling non-residential commercial; retail, medical, land…?
Jonathan Farber: I think that’d be an interesting concept. I don’t know anyone that’s doing that. I’ve never heard of anyone doing that. So that could be very cool, actually. Do you ask for a reason? Like, do you know anyone doing that or just—?
Ash Patel: Yes. For years, I’ve tried to convince residential investors to go into commercial. And when I say commercial, my definition is non-residential commercial; anything without showers, or residential tenants, right? And the true definition is five units and above for multifamily is considered commercial. But I’ve always been a commercial investor, and I’ve mentored a ton of people. I’ve tried to convince people to at least take on some commercial, if not totally transition. For me, it’s just a much better asset class, easier to manage, easier to control the NOI. And I’ve convinced a few wholesalers to go into that, and they’re seeing the advantages of that.
Jonathan Farber: That is fascinating.
Ash Patel: So I’d recommend anybody that’s investing in real estate to not disqualify commercial properties. And often the mentality is, “Well, I don’t know anything about commercial.” I didn’t either when I started. Or, “It’s too hard,” or, “It’s too expensive.” You can find mixed-use buildings for under $200,000 all day long. And what’s crazy is that I’ve had residential investors turn down mixed-use buildings. And when I say mixed-use, this example was about 3,000 square feet of retail and four apartments above it. And the retail scared them so much that they chose to walk away from the deal. And the apartments scared me, so I kind of walked away from the deal. But the funny thing is, I asked this individual what he would value four apartments for in that area if the commercial unit wasn’t there? And his response was 260k-270k. The building was for sale for 150k. Now, granted, it needs rehab.
Jonathan Farber: Right.
Ash Patel: But I thought, “Oh my god, I would value the commercial at about 150k, all day long.” So it’s just that bridging the gap between the residential and commercial. We kind of have blinders on, on whatever asset class we typically chase.
Jonathan Farber: I totally agree with that. It’s so funny. This is a small example, but I’ve got to give him a shout out actually… I’m working at a friend’s office here, he’s been on the podcast too, John Cohen. He’s been a multifamily investor, typically, and he started with land, but now he’s experimenting with land, just having some fun with land as multifamily is, for a lot of reasons, gotten a little tighter, or become more competitive. So I think that is such an important thing, to be able to pivot and also experiment with different markets.
Now, it’s a tough thing also to balance with shiny object syndrome; there’s a gray area there, but it’s probably more in the bucket of Who Moved My Cheese, to adapt to where you can make money and where it’s less competitive. And that’s cool to hear that that’s something that’s definitely less competitive. But it’s also cool to hear him, he’s having a lot of success with it. And a lot of people I think are banging their heads against multifamily, saying they can’t get a deal, or they’re stuck for the last year. It’s cool to think through different strategies that can get you fired up and make you money and keep you moving.
Ash Patel: Yes. So to end the story on that mixed-use building, I did purchase it for 150k… And the appraiser was beside himself, because he had a real problem appraising this; his valuation came in to $550,000, and he couldn’t justify the low purchase price, and in turn, couldn’t justify the high appraisal. So he was just spinning his head, and… Good problem to have.
So back to what you were saying. If you find an expert, it’s really not shiny object syndrome. We just acquired— or not acquired. We have a contract on a piece of land, and we don’t know much about land. So we’ve got some civil engineers, who are friends of ours, that are experts in industrial land. So we kind of brought them into the deal, and they’re holding our hands through this.
So if you find a commercial deal, a medical building, a triple net retail deal, just find an expert in that arena to partner with. And there’s no reason you can’t wholesale deals like that, right?
Jonathan Farber: For sure.
Ash Patel: It’s just thinking outside of the box a little bit.
Jonathan Farber: Yes, that’s hilarious to think that’s how it actually went down in the end, that someone just getting into the appraisal and actually knowing what the value could be or should be… But it’s funny to think through what we tell ourselves too, about allowing ourselves to accept something or just roll it out before understanding it.
Ash Patel: Yes, and there’s a lot less competition in commercial than there is in residential. And again, in the commercial space the properties that are between 100 and maybe $600,000 or $700,000 often have mom-and-pop businesses and not national tenants. So a lot of out-of-state buyers are not attracted to those, and they’re a little bit harder to finance with lenders. So I always use a local lender to finance those deals. A lot of big banks don’t like any vacancy. They hate mixed-use buildings and they hate older properties that have anything wrong with them or any vacancy. They want stabilized properties that have been cash-flowing for 3+ years.
Jonathan Farber: Mm-hmm.
Ash Patel: So find those niches where there’s not a lot of competition.
Jonathan Farber: Yes, that was the first thing I thought when you said it. Is anyone wholesaling commercial stuff? I don’t know anyone that’s doing that, and I think about it like, “Okay, if someone’s listening to this and wondering how to get started, we’re talking about this is less competitive.” So if you feel like you’re stuck doing regular wholesaling or whatever, there’s almost always a way. It’s just a matter of experimenting and trying it.
Ash Patel: Yes. And the other thought is, there’s wholesalers out there that are so good, so big, and have so many systems in place, that the barrier to entry is more difficult, because you’re competing against these guys that are just incredible; they’re machines at turning deals, right?
Jonathan Farber: Yes, that’s something that—again, I don’t want to discourage anyone, but something that I see a lot with beginners or even people that are investing on the side, while they have a W-2 – thinking that some way they can outsmart the person that wakes up every day and does this. And again, I don’t want to discourage anyone to say, you don’t have some set of skills that can be a differentiator for you. But I naively thought that too. It was ego and stupidity. And I think a lot of beginners that I talk to also think that it’s easier than it is, or think that in some way, they can outsmart someone working three hours a day when the other person is doing 18, and they live in that territory. Again, not to discourage them, but it’s something to seriously consider when you’re thinking about building your team or picking a strategy or finding a mentor or just figuring out what strategy you can kind of align with all those things and not get the wrong expectation.
Ash Patel: And how do you overcome that?
Jonathan Farber: I think the hack is getting around the right people, bringing value. It’s trite, a lot of people say it. But again, it’s why I reached out to Joe in the way that I did. My view with any networking is to add value before I asked for value, and that is I think the key that opens so many doors. And everyone has a lot of the same problems. A lot of visionary types, they hate admin work, they hate social media, they’re not good at marketing. So if you can find ways to bring value to those people… Like for me with the wholesale stuff, we’re doing a 90-day wholesale challenge, because we want to improve our process, but also teach our group.
So there’s a wholesaler that I know, he does a lot of training, a lot of coaching. And I know he’s trying to get more people into his programs. So I reached out to him, I tried to make it a value-add… Because he has the systems already, and if I can get people to understand his systems now and then kind of be familiar with him, he gets benefit out of it.
So reach out to a couple people like that. I know I can learn it on my own, it might take a year, but with the right coaching and kind of over-the-shoulder system views, it might take three months or six months; it could cut the time in half.
So for me, reading is great. Podcasting is great. YouTubing is great. But I love to ask people situational questions, see how they do it on their screen, and actually understand what they’re doing every day. So for me, that’s how I overcome it, and that’s what I’ll probably keep doing if I have new ventures that pop up.
Ash Patel: Two incredible pieces of advice – be around the right people and add value before you ask. Incredible. It’s amazing how many people – I’ve gotten calls or emails, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to get with you.” “Really?” “Yeah, yeah.” “For what?” “No, I want to learn what you do.” “Oh, okay.” “I just haven’t had time to get with you.” Do not approach people like that.
Jonathan Farber: Yes, that’s probably the worst thing you could ever do. And again, for someone also listening right now, I’d like to make it as tactical as possible. I don’t like to just say add value. Even if you have the chance to talk to someone or you could shoot them a DM, which – let me just tell you, everyone’s accessible these days. Get on someone’s live and ask them, “What is your biggest challenge right now?” They’re going to tell you, and then start coming up with a plan to fix that challenge. It could be, “We’re doing great with investors, but we’re doing really shitty at asset management,” or “We’re really struggling with marketing; we have no social media presence, we have no campaign.” Okay, now you know your way in. The next time you can reach out to that person to say, “Hey, I went on Canva, I just took some your headshots from social media and I designed 10 images you can post on Instagram. I’m looking to learn about this business. I would love to add some value to you before I even ask for anything, but just to get around you. Could I help you maybe just put some of this stuff out there?” Watch what happens.
You send it to 10 people, I bet you you get at least 50% response rate. Probably more, because that’s such a knee-jerk head-turn type reaction. I sent it out to other multifamily investors when I was trying to get around the right people, 100% response rate, because you take the time and do one extra step, instead of asking the worst, “Will you be my mentor?” Or, “Can I pick your brain?” And then get on the phone and just say, “How did you get started?” It’s just got to be an upward kind of value-add… But that right there, do that and you can get around almost anyone you want. Watch.
Ash Patel: Yes, that’s a roadmap you just gave them; you gave our audience exactly how to do it. So I want to touch back on to your Airbnbs and your short-term rentals. How do you find the ideal locations. Because every destination town can’t be ideal?
Jonathan Farber: Yes… A combination. For me it hasn’t always matched, but in a lot of markets now the level of competition will also match the potential revenue. So if you see a lot of people say Gatlinburg or the Smoky Mountains; that’s a really hot spot right now, and the revenue numbers there are ridiculous. But now the amount of listings that come on the market and the price of those listings is starting to be basically analyzed based on Airbnb revenue, so it’s getting a little insane.
My high-level criteria before I dig into the numbers are — I just look at places that are in a timezone that I like. I like to do business in places that operationally makes sense and it’s easy. The second thing, you need to understand the restrictions; if they have something against nightly, or if there are certain areas within a town that don’t allow it.
And then third, I like to think about it as places where I like to go. And then based on that, if it checks those boxes, I’ll do a deeper level of research; I’ll start looking at other listings in that area, I’ll go on AirDNA, I’ll start looking on Google Travel to see how many reviews, the different destinations or points of interest in that market have, and then what the housing arrangements look like.
And then from there, honestly, what I’ll do a lot of times, I’ll just reach out to hosts, and you can be directly upfront. It’s funny, a lot of hosts in this business, they’re very willing to help, they’re more mom-and-pop. So it’s not as combative or competitive. Or you can reach out also, I would say – a totally fair way to do it, and you might have a better foot in the door, you could reach out and say, “Hey, I’m considering this market. Would you ever consider co-hosting? I’m just looking to understand what things are going on here.” And co-hosting is just another word for managing. And a lot of small hosts or property owners – they’ll take on another property or two. And in the process of building that relationship, they’ll tell you, “Buy here, don’t buy here. We wish we could have done this.” And it’s a really good way to start building a foundation of research.
And then another thing I always like to do, I like to go and stay. I’ll go to the properties or I’ll go to the town for some time, feel it out, talk to people… This probably applies in multifamily or single-family as well for traditional, but just get a feel for it. The locals can give you everything that might have taken a month and maybe two days in being on foot and kind of understanding if something smells weird. Or if there’s a view that people come for that you can see on Google Maps. Stuff like that or you can start to kind of put a framework together. And then from there, running the numbers. AirDNA is a great tool; it pulls information from active listings on Airbnb, Vrbo, HomeAway. That can be a high-level start to the numbers to get an idea of average daily rate, occupancy.
And then from there, same kind of thing. I like to look at comps, which is just looking at other listings, seeing where they are, looking at their calendars, just getting an idea of how booked up they are. And then also inquiring sometimes. If you see someone has their calendar fully blocked off, ask them, “Are you blocking this off for personal use or is this being booked?” You can ask it innocently, but you can also find out, what is this? Some people just block off their calendar, some people get really long bookings. That’s good to know going in to kind of get an idea of what your property can do.
And then ultimately, I’ll just say – this is not investing advice, but we always go conservative. I think that’s kind of across the board for people that have done a deal or two, be conservative. And then in a lot of these cases right now we have seen ways to increase revenue by adding better pictures or making the place more of an experience, bringing in a decorator… Which is a cost, but we’ve seen that pay really nice returns, as opposed to a lot of, I would say, non-professional, non-sophisticated operators that we’re using as a baseline. And then we can come in and overachieve on those numbers. So it’s an investment, and there’s a cost. I’m not decorative. Now I have a better idea of color matching and schemes and all that, but not really. But I like to put people in place that are good at what they do, and that’s helped us beat our expectations for underwriting.
Ash Patel: Incredible. You just gave the Best Ever listeners a great roadmap of how to identify Airbnb properties or short-term rentals. Thank you for that. Jonathan, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?
Jonathan Farber: Do not take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with, or you don’t admire in the space. This was my biggest mistake growing up, and also when I was in corporate America. I was taking advice from people that I didn’t admire, or they were 20 years down the road from me, and I realized they were doing something totally different than what I wanted to be doing. So not really specific to real estate, general business advice, but that advice from one of my early mentors just completely changed my life.
Ash Patel: I love that. Great advice.
Ash Patel: Jonathan, are you ready for the Lightning Round?
Jonathan Farber: Let’s do it.
Ash Patel: Let’s do it. Jonathan, what’s the best ever book you recently read?
Jonathan Farber: I’ll go with Joe’s book. I’ve got to say it’s my favorite real estate book, Best Ever Apartment Syndication Guide for real estate. And I would say for business, Rocket Fuel; it really helped me just understanding I can’t do everything by myself, and start delegating stuff. But Joe’s book really rocked me from a real estate standpoint, just systems.
Ash Patel: That’s great. And Rocket Fuel helped me as well. I thought that I was just unorganized and disheveled all the time. And really, it helped me learn that I’m a visionary, like you, but I’m not a taskmaster, and I need to partner with a taskmaster.
Jonathan Farber: Right on.
Ash Patel: Have you read, Who Not How?
Jonathan Farber: I’m reading that right now, actually.
Ash Patel: Alright.
Jonathan Farber: Yes.
Ash Patel: So that’s the next progression; that helped me a lot. Jonathan, what’s the best ever way you like to give back?
Jonathan Farber: I keep my calendar open every Friday, and we’ll just do as many question calls, pick-your-brain coffee calls as I can. Those helped me a lot, when I was getting started. I reached out to the first 120 guests at BiggerPockets, and it helped me so much when I didn’t have real estate friends or mentors. So that’s one way that it’s fun. I like to give back and help people get started and just help people take the red pill, just break out and escape. So that’s been really fun, just to keep my calendar open on Fridays and get my Calendly link out to my group or on social media and seeing if I can help more people.
Ash Patel: Jonathan, how can the Best Ever listeners reach out to you?
Jonathan Farber: My email is just jonjfarber@outlook.com, that’s my personal email. On all social medias, it’s just Jonjfarb. I’m doing a lot more on YouTube and Tiktok, it’s been a fun little journey there… But those are good ways. I do a podcast too, again, inspired from Joe to do a daily podcast. Now we’ve kind of added some different features, and now I have a co-host that helps me with stuff, but we went for a year. That’s Millennial Millionaires Through Real Estate. And if you look that up on Facebook too, we have a group of about 4,000 people that are looking to get after it and add income streams and escape their corporate jobs. So we love doing that.
So those are the main ways, but if you reach out, happy to help, and I’ve got so much help from other people that always try to make time. So reach out to me directly on any social media or my email and we’ll get it set up.
Ash Patel: Jonathan, thank you for being on the show. You started the conversation out talking about you were a kid with no ambition, you wanted to go down the golf road, and now you’ve assembled something great in real estate. So thank you for sharing all of your advice.
Best Ever listeners, thank you for joining us. Have a best ever day.
Jonathan Farber: Thanks, Ash.
Website disclaimer
This website, including the podcasts and other content herein, are made available by Joesta PF LLC solely for informational purposes. The information, statements, comments, views and opinions expressed in this website do not constitute and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC are providing or undertaking to provide any financial, economic, legal, accounting, tax or other advice in or by virtue of this website. The information, statements, comments, views and opinions provided in this website are general in nature, and such information, statements, comments, views and opinions are not intended to be and should not be construed as the provision of investment advice by Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC to that listener or generally, and do not result in any listener being considered a client or customer of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC.
The information, statements, comments, views, and opinions expressed or provided in this website (including by speakers who are not officers, employees, or agents of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC) are not necessarily those of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC, and may not be current. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC make any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any of the information, statements, comments, views or opinions contained in this website, and any liability therefor (including in respect of direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage of any kind whatsoever) is expressly disclaimed. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC undertake any obligation whatsoever to provide any form of update, amendment, change or correction to any of the information, statements, comments, views or opinions set forth in this podcast.
No part of this podcast may, without Joesta PF LLC’s prior written consent, be reproduced, redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in any form, by any means.
Joe Fairless serves as director of investor relations with Ashcroft Capital, a real estate investment firm. Ashcroft Capital is not affiliated with Joesta PF LLC or this website, and is not responsible for any of the content herein.
Oral Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action. For more information, go to www.bestevershow.com.
